Begins wonderfully; ends melodramatically.
A family is separated overnight when East Berlin erects the Berlin Wall.
Eight-year-old Gerta wakes up on Aug. 13, 1961, to find that a barbed wire fence has been erected around East Berlin. Two days earlier, her father and older brother Dominic had traveled to West Berlin to look for work, and now they can’t get back. Based on historical fact, the story shines a personal light on the many families who were separated by the division of the two cities. Nielsen convincingly paints a chilling picture of repressive, Communist-controlled East Berlin, so much so that when Greta sees her father on the other side of the wall, years later, pantomiming digging, readers easily accept her plan to dig an escape tunnel into West Berlin. As Greta, her other older brother, Fritz, and eventually their mother dig the tunnel, enduring hunger, exhaustion, and risking detection, readers will root for them with every shovelful. However, when the diggers realize the noise they hear is their father digging from the other side and that their tunnels are now only feet apart, instead of pushing through and running to freedom, they decide that they should stop and reinforce the tunnels. This decision seems ludicrous. Further implausible decisions ramp up the tension, but they also ramp up readers’ frustration levels, and a formerly riveting tale of history becomes a melodrama.
Begins wonderfully; ends melodramatically. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-68242-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist.
With Rumpelstiltskin and his band of villains still on the loose, the students and staff of Fairy Tale Reform School are on high alert as they prepare for the next attack.
Classes are devoted to teaching battle techniques and conjuring new weapons, which narrator Gilly finds preferable to learning history or manners. But Maxine, her ogress friend, has had it with all the doom and gloom. The last straw is when the agenda at the Royal Lady-in-Waiting meeting is changed from “How to Plan the Perfect Fairy Garden Party” to designing flying rocks and creating flower darts. While on a class field trip to the village to investigate their future careers, Maxine finds a magic lamp housing a genie named Darlene. Her wish that everyone be happy works a little too well. War preparations are put on hold as the school fills with flowers, laughter, and plans for a musical production. But when Gilly is tapped to fill in for the local chief of the dwarf police, things really take a turn for the worse. The students, including fairies, ogres, and the part-human/part-beast offspring of Beauty and the ex-Beast, focus on friendship and supporting one another in spite of their differences. Humility, forgiveness, and loyalty are also highly regarded in the FTRS community. Human Gilly is white, but there is racial as well as species diversity at FTRS.
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-5167-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Wholesome shading to bland, but well-stocked with exotic creatures and locales, plus an agreeable cast headed by a child...
A San Diego preteen learns that she’s an elf, with a place in magic school if she moves to the elves’ hidden realm.
Having felt like an outsider since a knock on the head at age 5 left her able to read minds, Sophie is thrilled when hunky teen stranger Fitz convinces her that she’s not human at all and transports her to the land of Lumenaria, where the ageless elves live. Taken in by a loving couple who run a sanctuary for extinct and mythical animals, Sophie quickly gathers friends and rivals at Foxfire, a distinctly Hogwarts-style school. She also uncovers both clues to her mysterious origins and hints that a rash of strangely hard-to-quench wildfires back on Earth are signs of some dark scheme at work. Though Messenger introduces several characters with inner conflicts and ambiguous agendas, Sophie herself is more simply drawn as a smart, radiant newcomer who unwillingly becomes the center of attention while developing what turn out to be uncommonly powerful magical abilities—reminiscent of the younger Harry Potter, though lacking that streak of mischievousness that rescues Harry from seeming a little too perfect. The author puts her through a kidnapping and several close brushes with death before leaving her poised, amid hints of a higher destiny and still-anonymous enemies, for sequels.
Wholesome shading to bland, but well-stocked with exotic creatures and locales, plus an agreeable cast headed by a child who, while overly fond of screaming, rises to every challenge. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4593-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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